


escape velocity

by e_va



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Canon Compliant, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Heavily referenced terminal illness, Hurt/Comfort, Nate has a lot of issues but he has his emotional support team and that's helpful, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team as Family, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24104173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e_va/pseuds/e_va
Summary: It’s not his fault that the crew filters in and out of his apartment like they own the place.  Even if they did--which, okay, Hardison does--this is still Nate’s place, and he pays rent.Well, he doesn’t. But it’s not about the rent.  It’s about the principle of the thing.  And if they don’t want to see Nate drunk then they should learn to call ahead and ask if they can come over. Like normal people do.Nate's having a bad night.  Eliot's there to keep him from dying.
Relationships: Nathan Ford & Eliot Spencer, implied Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer - Relationship
Comments: 15
Kudos: 160





	escape velocity

Nate lifts the bottle to his lips, taking a large swig from it. The whiskey burns on its way down. He sits up just enough to reach over and set it on the table before, then collapses back onto the couch.

“You’re damn lucky the others have headed home for the night.”

Nate blinks, stares up at the wood-paneled ceiling. 

“Well,” he says, “I don’t see what that has to do with me. I didn’t invite them.” It’s not his fault that the crew filters in and out of his apartment like they own the place. Even if they did--which, okay, Hardison  _ does _ \--this is still Nate’s place, and he pays rent. 

Well, he doesn’t. But it’s not about the rent. It’s about the principle of the thing. And if they don’t want to see Nate drunk then they should learn to call ahead and ask if they can come over. Like normal people do. 

“Nate,” Eliot says. He sounds tired, exasperated. Nate pauses, waiting to see if Eliot has anything more to add, but Eliot leaves it at that, just lets his quiet displeasure hang in the air between them. He’s almost as bad as Sophie.

“You know,” Nate says. “That extends to you too. The invitation thing. Maybe you should leave if you have a problem with it.”

“Yeah,” Eliot says. “Well, maybe I will.”

“Good,” Nate snaps, pushing himself upright. It’s a mistake. The second that he stops reclining, his vision starts swimming, and the abruptness of the movement certainly doesn’t do much to help. His stomach seizes, breath leaving him in a strangled wheeze. “Ugh.” Something awful screeches in Nate’s ears and he shuts his mouth tight, swallowing the saliva pooling in his mouth. It does little to smooth away the bitter taste resting heavy against the back of Nate’s palate, the acidity of which warns of rising bile.

“Fuck. Nate?” Eliot again, sounding much closer. Nate looks up. The world spins perilously around him. He’s feeling dangerously unsteady. Eliot’s hovering over him now. He’s muscled his way in between the couch and table, which Nate had dragged flush against the couch hours ago for ease of access. Nate stares at the table, now standing crooked against the carpet. That’s the screeching noise accounted for, at least. Good to know that he hasn’t quite progressed to the point of auditory hallucinations yet. 

“Nate?” Eliot says again. He leans over, places a firm hand on Nate’s shoulder.

Nate shrugs him off. Or tries to, at least. But he lacks the strength and the coordination to extricate himself by force, so really all he does is manage to jostle himself in Eliot’s grip. Thankfully, Eliot seems to get the hint. He doesn’t let go, which would be Nate’s first choice, but he lowers his hand and loosens his grip, so all that is left is the barest touch to Nate’s elbow. Not steadying anymore, but ready to grab on in case someone needs to interfere and keep Nate from taking a short trip to a very hard floor. 

Which Eliot doesn’t need to do, of course, because Nate is fine. He has this under control.

“Listen,” Nate tells Eliot. “‘M Fine.” 

He leans forward, bracing one hand against the seat cushion so he won’t tilt forward and groping for the bottle with the other. Fuck, he knows he left it somewhere around here. “Just need to steady myself.”

“Yeah, that ain’t gonna steady you none,” Eliot snaps, and Nate’s gaze returns to him just long enough to see that Eliot’s got it in his hand.

He glares. “Give that back,” he says, though he knows that it’s a lost cause at this point. Eliot’s not holding that thing like he has any plans on handing it over.

Eliot just shoots Nate a scathing look. “You kidding me? Pretty sure its manslaughter if I hand this back to you knowing you’re a drink or two away from alcohol poisoning.”

“Am not,” Nate says, and the abbreviated statement sounds profoundly childish even to his intoxicated brain, but the effort of putting together full, coherent sentences seems too monumental for him to handle right now. “Can keep going.”

“You shouldn’t,” Eliot says. Somehow he manages to keep the frustration out of his voice, though Nate can tell from the furrow of his brow and the hard set of his shoulders that Eliot is pissed.

“I thought you were going to go,” Nate tries again.

“You wish,” Eliot says.

“Yeah, I do.” 

“Well, tough.” Eliot’s scowling. He runs a hand through his hair, the way he does when he’s stressed. “You just...you gotta stop doing this to yourself, man. To the team.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Nate jerks again, and this time Eliot lets him go. “The team is fine,” Nate says. “It’s not going to affect the team. They’re not even  _ here _ , Eliot.”

“Yeah,” Eliot says, and now some of the tension that he’s carrying in his spine is starting to leak into his voice. “ _ This _ time. What if this happens on the job?”

“I’ve  _ never _ been this drunk on the job,” Nate says. “And I’m not that drunk.” That’s a blatant lie and they both know it, but it’s worth a shot. Maybe he’ll convince one of them.

“I’ve never seen you this drunk before,  _ period _ .” Eliot says. “So I don’t know, Nate.” He leans in, his dark eyes solemn. “Can you really say that this ain’t gonna be an issue? That there’s no chance you’re compromised? That you could get yourself killed. Or worse, one of the others--” 

“ _ Enough _ .” Nate says, and it's half a snarl, and oh shit. His voice sounds pretty bad. It sounds like someone’s been rubbing his throat raw with sandpaper, like he should be bleeding from the mouth, but when he licks his lips he just tastes salt and the ethanol-sharp tang of vodka. “I would never.” And that’s true. There is no ‘ _ or worse.’ _ Nate’s lived through ‘ _ or worse’ _ before. He doesn’t have plans to do it again.

“You say that now,” Eliot says.

“You know what, Eliot?” Nate looks up at Eliot, regrets the sudden movement when his vision flickers something awful and the pain in his gut redoubles. “If the others have concerns they can bring it to me themselves.”

“They  _ have _ ,” Eliot’s voice is tense.

Nate pulls at his collar, loosening it. The room suddenly feels incredibly hot, and the extra air on his skin doesn’t do much to help. They have. Eliot’s right about that. But not the way Eliot does. Sophie comes close. Good God, she can be harsh. Nate gets more criticism from Sophie in a day than Eliot’s given over the course of their entire relationship, but with Sophie there’s...history. Half the time it’s  _ Nate, you can’t do this, your behavior is unacceptable _ and the other half is just her, with those soulful brown eyes, tangling her hand in his. Saying  _ Oh, Nate, _ with that quiet, sad voice, like she’s not sure whether she loves him or pities him.

The answer’s both. Nate’s made a career out of reading people, and he can do his job well enough to know that the answer is both. But that’s beside the point. The point is that he and Sophie have a complicated relationship, and she can say things the others can’t, and they all respect that. Including Eliot, but apparently, not  _ always _ including Eliot.

“Parker and Hardison, y’know,” Nate says, operating mostly off of guesswork, but he knows he’s right when he sees Eliot’s lips press flat at the sound of their names. “They don’t need you to do this for them.”

“Nate,” Eliot says, like he’s trying to say  _ stop _ instead. But Nate isn’t done yet. Fuck it, if Eliot wants to play hardball, so can Nate.

“I mean, it’s cute,” Nate says. “But they’ve dealt with me drunk before.”

“You get mean when you’re drunk,” Eliot says.

“I’m always mean.”

“You’re usually mean,” Eliot corrects. “And you’re nicer when you’re sober.”

“Since when?”

“You were good,” Eliot says gruffly, “with Hardison. When we rigged the jury and he had to play lawyer. What did you mean  _ cute _ ?”

Nate waves a hand vaguely in the air. If he were sober, he’d stand, put some distance between himself and Eliot. Angle himself away slightly. Create some physical and emotional space. That’s always helpful. But unfortunately, Nate’s pretty sure that if he tries to stand he’s going to fall and brain himself. 

“You know, the big brother act.  _ Parker and Hardison, I’ll protect you _ .  _ Eat your vegetables.  _ And now this thing. The, uh, game of keep-away you play with them when I’m drunk. Don’t come home because--well, you know.” Eliot makes a face like he doesn’t know, and maybe Nate fucked up with this metaphor, because that means he’s the shitty, drunk dad in this scenario, and now Nate is seriously considering snatching the bottle from Eliot’s hand, because that’s not a thought he can have unless he’s following it with a chaser.

“I’m not  _ playing brother _ ,” Eliot says sharply.

“No, I suppose you’d prefer a different type of relationship,” Nate says. “But you’re taking what you think you can get, which is rational but dumb.”

“ _ Nate _ ,” Eliot says, and Nate shuts his mouth with a click. This isn’t the uncomfortable, slightly unnerved way that Eliot had said his name last time. This has got actual pain in it. Nate files the weak spot away in his mind, but he has no use for it tonight. He’s just trying to make a point. Though what that point was, he can’t quite remember anymore. God, he’s had a lot to drink.

“You’re really different from them,” Nate says the thought as it occurs to him. 

Eliot’s face darkens. He averts his gaze, staring at the coffee table with an intensity that Nate doesn’t know how to interpret. “I know,” Eliot says distantly, with the same clinical detachment that he uses sometimes when his old mercenary ties come up.

Nate blinks. “No, I…”

He doesn’t often find himself at a loss for words, but he falters now. Parker and Hardison are the problem children. Parker’s a wildcard, too independent for her behavior to be fully controlled, and too eccentric for her behavior to have any sort of predictability. Hardison’s childish--acceptable to the extent that he’s their youngest by a margin of a few years, and that his position and his talent allow him the leeway to be a little irresponsible. Unacceptable when he shows up to jobs late because he’s been playing video games until four in the morning, and unacceptable when he gets so far ahead of himself that he doesn’t see himself barreling into trouble until he’s already there.

But when it comes down to it, if Nate yanks the leash, they’ll fall into line. If Nate presents them with a lesson--Parker’s jury duty, Hardison’s unfortunate stint as the Ice Man--they  _ learn _ . 

Eliot, though, follows Nate’s orders very nearly like he’d never left the military. A little lip here and there, sure, but they’re  _ criminals _ and not actually the US government. Nate never could have predicted how seriously Eliot would take his first directive, though.  _ Keep the team safe _ . Even from Nate, apparently. Nate would approve if he ever agreed with Eliot’s judgements on the matter. Instead, it’s just a pain in the ass. But it does make Eliot a good counterweight to the other two. Parker and Hardison keep Eliot grounded and while Nate has no idea whether or not they’re the  _ only _ things keeping Eliot from sinking somewhere dark and terrible, they certainly help. And in turn, Parker and Hardison get someone watching their backs when they forget to do it themselves. 

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” Nate says, a little helplessly, and something like distress must come through in his voice, because Eliot looks back in his direction, eyes softening.

“Yeah, I know, big guy,” Eliot says. He doesn’t quite sound like he’s come back to himself, though. “Can you get up?”

This is bad. Nate knows that he fucks up a lot when he’s drunk, but he doesn’t have a lot of experience hurting people on  _ accident _ . On purpose? Sure, all the time. But maybe, he thinks, he  _ has  _ had too much to drink.

And then, when he tries to stand and his vision swirls so badly that he has to use all his willpower not to vomit down the front of his shirt then and there, he tells Eliot as much.

“Yeah,” Eliot scoffs, “you think?”

Tottering, Nate presses his head into his hands. “No,” he says, and his voice is shamefully weak, “no, Eliot, I think I’ve  _ really _ had too much to drink.”

Eliot has a hand on Nate before Nate can blink, the tension radiating off of him like heat. Nate shudders a little. He’s sweating through his button-up. 

“Nate,” Eliot says. “Nate?”

“Mm?” Nate answers, still pressing his lips together because he doesn’t want to vomit here, but is pretty sure that any attempt to walk to the bathroom is going to end poorly.

“Hospital?” Eliot asks, seriously. His eyes flicker off to the left; Nate can practically see him trying to decide which alias would be best to admit Nate under.

Nate shakes his head, just barely. No. 

“You sure?”

Christ, Eliot’s really cruising to get the full show, isn’t he? “Pretty sure,” he says. “I think I just--” he gags, puts a hand over his mouth on instinct, even though it’s futile. All he really succeeds in doing is vomiting through his cupped hand, which in turn smears it over his mouth before it hits the floor. Disgusting. At least he’d managed to lean forward enough to keep from ruining his clothes. God knows he doesn’t have the dexterity to change right now, and he’s certainly not going to ask Eliot for help.

“Ah,” Eliot says. He doesn’t sound surprised or disgusted, just understanding. “Come on.”

Eliot waits out the series of gags patiently, and when Nate is done he ushers them both into the bathroom. Just in time, too, because they get there just as the second wave of nausea hits. Nate lunges for the toilet, collapsing over it just in time to avoid upchucking onto the tile. 

Eliot does swear this time, surprised, but he waits patiently by the door as Nate loses the contents of his stomach again and again.

This hurts, which is probably no more than Nate deserves. Somewhere during the third wave of vomiting, a hand drops onto his back, rubbing. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Eliot says, voice awfully gruff for the impossible gentleness of his hands. He reaches out, brushes some of Nate’s hair back from his forehead, where it had been plastered by sweat. 

And suddenly all Nate can think about is Sam. The thought spreads like an infection, freezing Nate’s whole body in an instant. It fills him up, consumes him whole, until there’s no room for anything else in him, not even air.

Eliot. His calloused hand, warm against Nate’s forehead.

Sam. Nauseous all the time from the chemo, and gaunter and smaller for it. He had felt so frail under Nate’s hands.

Nate had thought that he was getting better at remembering the good, not letting it be ruined by the misery. He’d thought it was working. Memories of Sam’s countless drawings, the way that he’d hold them up to Nate, only his eyes visible as he peered anxiously over the top of the scrawled drawings to watch his father appraise his work. The beach trips with Maggie. Teaching Sam to swim.

It matters. Nate  _ knows  _ it matters, but he can’t bring himself to care. It just feels so  _ small _ . It doesn’t matter, not next to the memory of the way Sam’s spine has felt as Nate had tried to comfort him, tracing the outline of Sam’s vertebrae with his fingers because his son was too thin. Next to the memory of Sam’s whole body convulsing, because it was so damn hard for him to keep down food.

Nate can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, can’t move. He throws up again, and it  _ hurts _ , even more than it should, because he desperately tries to catch an inhale and instead he nearly chokes.

“Nate!” Eliot says, sounding truly alarmed. He reaches out for Nate’s face, as if to check Nate’s eyes or touch his brow, and suddenly Nate can move again, just enough to jerk away, scramble back, heaving in shuddering, horrified breaths.

“Don’t  _ fucking _ touch me,” Nate says, and its meant to sound venomous. It just sounds raw and panicked, because of course it does. Even Nate can’t make himself intimidating as he shakes to pieces, back pressed against the wall. “Don’t. Don’t.”

Eliot rises slightly from where he was kneeling by the toilet, holding both hands out. Pacifying, like Nate is a wild animal. “Okay,” he says. “Hey, Nate, it’s okay.”

Nate heaves in a pained breath, forces himself to still. “Just don’t,” he says, shakes his head.

Eliot nods seriously. “I’ll sit here,” he keeps his hands up, but gestures down to a spot on the floor, a good four feet away from Nate. Nate waits, then realizes that this is Eliot asking for permission. He nods.

Eliot settles down, criss-cross applesauce, and Nate hates this. Hates that this is how Eliot treats Hardison and Parker when he’s worried about them. Hates that it’s probably for the best, because Nate can’t stand the concept of anyone touching him right now.

Nate reaches up, drags a hand across his face.

“You okay?” Eliot says, serious. Quiet. 

Nate cracks a smile. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

It’s an invitation to laugh it off. ‘Why  _ wouldn’t _ I be okay?’ says the man who just had a panic attack while vomiting.

But Eliot doesn’t rise to the bait. “You’re crying,” he says.

Huh. Well, that explains a few things. Including why his nose is clogging up so bad.

“Damn. Been a while since that happened,” Nate says.  _ Been a while _ might be an exercise in understatement. Nate had cried himself dry sometime between being dragged off his son’s dead body and twenty minutes later, when the doctor had come out to deliver the news officially and said, dark gray eyes angled solemnly downward: “ _ Mr. and Mrs. Ford, I’m so sorry.” _

Maggie had had to leave the room afterwards. She’d been holding it together until then. She’d had to, with Nate crying convulsively beside her. She’d wept quietly, rubbing his arm soothingly with one hand. And then the doctor had come out, and he’d been with Sam since the beginning, had fought just as hard as Nate to get Sam approved for experimental treatment, and his eyes were teary, and in that moment Nate had hated him more than anything in the world. Maggie had started crying in earnest then, her entire body shuddering with the force of it. And maybe Nate should have held her, like she had him. Maybe he should have taken her by the hand and said, “Thank you doctor. We know you did everything you could.” 

And instead he’d sat in his chair, still and blank, until the doctor dipped his head and excused himself from the room. As Maggie’s parents held her instead, cradling her in their arms and ushering her down the hall to somewhere with a little more privacy. Nate had stared at the wall, not seeing it, and by then his eyes were dry as bone.

“That ain’t healthy,” Eliot notes quietly, and Nate blinks his direction. Drags his sleeve across his face to keep from feeling like a total mess. It doesn’t work, because there’s nothing short of a full shower and three days rest that will clean him up after all this.

“Yeah,” Nate agrees. “I’m sorry, Eliot.”

“For what?”

“All of it.”

“Helpful.”

Nate glances up, cringes painfully at the sight of the fluorescent light and slings an arm over his eyes instead. 

“I drank too much,” Nate amends. 

“Yeah.” Now  _ there’s  _ the wry amusement Nate was fishing for earlier. “You did. Lucky I was here.”

Nate decides not to comment on that last bit. “I got better, for a while. For a good while. And here I am.”

“Nate,” Eliot says sadly. “Relapses happen. I’m not gonna say that this is okay...because it ain’t. Not for us, and certainly not for you. And you need to get better. You need to get help getting better.”

“I don’t think I can get better,” Nate says. 

“But you gotta try. For us  _ and  _ for you.”

“Which one matters more?”

“Whichever one kicks your ass into gear.”

“Well, you know,” Nate says tiredly, “I really don’t think dangling ‘for the team’ in front of my head holds quite the same weight for me as it does for you.”

“Probably not,” Eliot acknowledges easily. “That don’t mean much, though. You do the kind of shit I’m guilty of, Nate Ford, and you’ll see why. So just cause it don’t mean the same to you as it does me doesn’t mean it won’t work.”

“Huh. You’re smarter than you look, Eliot.”

“I’m not rising to that bait,” Eliot says, tapping his forehead wisely. “I’m too smart for that.”

“Ha!” Nate can’t help the half-choked laugh. He inhales deeply. Wipes at his face. “You want me to try for the team.”

“And yourself,” Eliot reminds. Nate makes a dismissive noise, and for some reason Eliot repeats. “ _ And yourself _ .”

“And myself! Sure, okay, whatever.” Nate drops the arm that’s covering his eyes, stares up into the painfully bright overhead light, rings of light haloing out from around the bulbs.

“I just,” Nate takes a deep breath, pained, suddenly deeply aware of how wet his eyes are. “I drank too much.”

“I know,” Eliot says gently.

“I just feel,” Nate says, chest tight and burning with it, “I just feel so bad, Eliot.”

“I know,” Eliot says again. “But this ain’t the medicine.”

_ Then what is? _ Nate thinks. The right medicine was the one that IYS had refused to pay for, for Sam. The right medicine was the one that could have saved Nate’s son. The only medicine Nate ever needed--ever really needed--was the one that could have let Sam live. Anything else is just like trying to slap a bandaid on a bullethole. It’s trying to hold the Titanic together with duct tape. Alcohol is just the painkiller.

His stomach turns again; and Nate swallows.

“Just think about it,” Eliot sounds sad. He sounds like Sophie, watching a tragedy unfold, helpless to stop it. 

“Fine,” Nate says, if only to smooth out that crease that’s formed between Eliot’s brow. Eliot doesn’t ask if he means it. Which is good, because Nate has no idea.

  
  
  


Nate wakes up with a horrific headache. He takes a moment to collect himself. His curtains are closed, but even the dimness of his room is painful. There’s the sound of someone moving around in the kitchen. It should be a bad sign that Nate’s first thought isn’t  _ thief _ or  _ intruder _ or  _ assassin sent here to kill me _ \--especially considering that option number three has historical precedent for him in this apartment--but instead  _ they have  _ got  _ to stop breaking in without calling ahead _ .

It isn’t until he steps outside his room, still in his robe, and sees...Eliot. Just Eliot, in an otherwise barren apartment, that he remembers.

“Ugh,” he says. “Oh boy.”

“Yeah,” Eliot says. He flips a pancake, lets it sit for a few seconds, and then slides it onto the plate, on top of a stack of exquisitely golden pancakes. Too bad even the  _ thought _ of food is turning Nate’s stomach. Eliot pauses, puts the pan back on the stove, and then briefly turns his attention to the fridge. He reaches in, pulls out a plastic bottle of watery pink liquid, and pours it into a large glass with some ice. He slides it in front of Nate. “Electrolyte solution. There’s sugar in it. ‘S like Gatorade. Rehydrate.”

Nate sniffs it, questioningly, and then sips. Fuck, that’s sweet, and it doesn’t even  _ taste _ that good. Eliot barks a laugh from where he’s returned to minding the stove, and Nate has no idea how he even  _ saw  _ the face Nate’s pulling, but he’s not going to question it.

“You know,” Nate says, “in  _ my  _ day--”

“Oh, don’t start,” Eliot interrupts. “You want an old-fashioned hangover cure, I can get you a raw egg and stop,” he nods at the pan, “with these.”

Nate shuts his mouth, mimes zipping his lips and throwing away the key, and then changes the subject. “You cleaned up,” he says, pointedly not looking at the place next to his couch that is very conspicuously lacking a large puddle of vomit.

“Lucky you,” Eliot says.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Eliot says, softer this time. “No problem, man.”

“Right,” says Nate.

Eliot pauses. “Right…?” he says, clearly aware that Nate’s trying to lead into something.

“Last night won’t be...an issue, right?” Nate says. “For the team?”

Eliot stares hard. “I ain’t gonna think less of you for throwing up a few times or having a panic attack, Nate,” he says eventually, “but whether what happened last night is gonna be an  _ issue _ ? That depends more on you than me, I think.”

Nate doesn’t mean for it to be timed like that, but really, his luck would dictate that his swig from his flask halfway through  _ that depends _ . 

Oh boy, he thinks, but Eliot doesn’t look fazed. 

“I know,” he says lamely. “I…”

The only way to resolve this is to back off. They’re sitting here around Nate’s kitchen island while Eliot bustles about cooking breakfast, and they’re talking about Nate’s trauma and promises that he’s already breaking. Like they’re some sort of family. That’s bad news for this conversation, because Nate throwing back a drink in front of a coworker leads to a much different conversation than Nate doing so in front of a friend. And they are friends, Nate knows, but the easiest way to diffuse this situation is to be Eliot’s boss instead, for right now at least.

But Eliot beats him to the punch.

“It’s fine, Nate,” Eliot says, sounding vaguely amused. “Didn’t expect you to quit cold turkey after one conversation.”

“Oh,” Nate blinks. “Okay, then.”

“Okay,” Eliot says. He flips the last pancake onto the plate and then gives Nate a pointed look. “You set out the plates while I wash up.”

It’s said like an order--but then again, they all know to follow Eliot’s lead in the kitchen. Nate nods, sets out two plates on the table. He rummages through the fridge, grabbing maple syrup, the container of cool whip that makes Eliot growl about heart disease, and a bowl of freshly sliced strawberries that Nate definitely didn’t put there. He arranges it the way Maggie always used to, when they did their family breakfasts, in a perfect circle between their plates, though he doesn’t have that spinnable platter thing that Maggie had bought for them, so it doesn’t have quite the same effect. 

He puts a shot into his electrolyte solution. Just one--enough to keep him from starting to twitch, not enough to make him feel anything. 

Eliot sees, and Nate knows it. It hangs in the air between them, even if it doesn’t sour the mood. This isn’t over, of course. 

“Cool whip, Nate?” Eliot says, pulling his chair out and taking a seat across from Nate. “That’s going to clog your arteries.”

“We’re having pancakes, Eliot,” Nate says, lips quirking slightly. “Loosen up a little.”

“If it matters to you that much I could have just whipped some for you myself,” Eliot huffs, but he smiles back. And sure enough, he reaches out and shovels a spoonful onto his own plate. 

Eliot won’t stop fighting Nate on this. Neither will Sophie, or any of the others. Nate knows this. And not for the first time ever, but perhaps for the first time in a long time, Nate is grateful for it. 

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was supposed to be a hurt/comfort fic about the OT3 but it became this. WHOOPS. Nate as a character is something that's actually really special to me; he's so flawed and complex, and his recovery is full of backslides and forward progress, but by the end? he's come so far. And to me that's what Leverage has always been about: broken people, and in the case of Eliot and Nate in particular--sometimes *bad* people--coming together and caring for each other and choosing to do better, even when it isn't easy. That's what I love about it.
> 
> hopefully the ending of this fic is happy enough--it's meant to be. the timeline on this is ambiguous (though I h/c it as taking place towards the end of season 2) and it isn't meant to represent nate Miraculously Recovering so much as it is meant to be one moment--of many--where he remembers that he has things he wants to recover for. A step forward, and one of many that he takes on the long road to getting better.


End file.
